This is from an Op-Ed published in the Financial Times, written by Joe Lieberman.
The record on this is as clear as the sky is blue: voluntary programmes like the one proposed by the president simply do not work. At the 1992 summit in Rio de Janeiro, the US agreed to the convention on climate change and signed up to a "voluntary" goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. Voluntary programmes were attempted. But US greenhouse gas emissions instead increased by 14 per cent between 1990 and 2000.
In fact, under the logic of the Bush administration's plan, the faster the US economy grows, the more greenhouse gas emissions will be allowed to increase. This perverse result reflects precisely the wrong-headed, zero-sum approach that has been rejected by Democrats and Republicans alike in recent years.
. . . Senator John McCain and I have a legislative plan to start reducing harmful emissions immediately by harnessing US private sector innovation. The plan is called "cap and trade". The government sets an overall limit on the amount of greenhouse gases nationwide, then businesses have total flexibility to cut their own emissions as they see fit. They buy and sell credits to other companies on the open market instead of paying penalties to the authorities."
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